{"id":4673,"date":"2009-06-21T20:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T02:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/a-state-agency-promoting-a-private-group-hmm%e2%80%a6\/"},"modified":"2009-06-21T20:57:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T02:57:00","slug":"a-state-agency-promoting-a-private-group-hmm%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/a-state-agency-promoting-a-private-group-hmm%e2%80%a6\/","title":{"rendered":"A state agency promoting a private group? Hmm\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like many in the media, I received an e-mail on Thursday from James Flores, spokesman for the secretary of state\u2019s office, that had nothing to do with the work of the government office that employs Flores.<\/p>\n

The e-mail, sent from Flores\u2019 government address, contained a news release announcing that the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials<\/a> (NALEO) was urging \u201cswift confirmation\u201d of Judge Sonia Sotomayor<\/a>, President Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

What does that have to do with the work of the Office of the New Mexico Secretary of State, you ask? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. But it does have something to do with Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/a>, who is the president<\/a> of the NALEO board. The group is a leadership organization for elected and appointed officials in America who are Latino. It claims to have 6,000 members.<\/p>\n

So, the bottom line is this: An employee of the secretary of state\u2019s office was using his official position and a state government e-mail server to promote a private organization\u2019s position on Sotomayor — an organization that\u2019s currently headed by his boss.<\/p>\n

Yeah, that about sums it up.<\/p>\n

So I sent an e-mail back to Flores:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m wondering if you can say anything for the record about whether you or the secretary of state see any problem with a state employee using the state\u2019s e-mail system to help promote the news and positions of a non-governmental organization like NALEO?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

Just asking.<\/p>\n

That was Thursday. I\u2019ve received no response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many in the media, I received an e-mail on Thursday from James Flores, spokesman for the secretary of state\u2019s office, that had nothing to do with the work of the government office that employs Flores. The e-mail, sent from Flores\u2019 government address, contained a news release announcing that the National Association of Latino Elected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}